


The One Where Eggsy Craves Praise

by demisms



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Canon Divergence, FIx It, Gen, Light Torture, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 17:19:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3658686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demisms/pseuds/demisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It also meant that Eggsy spent a good lot of time at HQ now adays, and when he wasn’t off cleaning up the messes that had sprung up in the wake of V-Day, he was Harry’s self appointed babysitter. Which had pissed Harry off for the first few weeks — “You’ve a unique, important set of skills. Now go <i>do</i> something with them.” — but as Eggsy got less annoyingly concerned and treated him less like he was going to keel over at any moment, they got on better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where Eggsy Craves Praise

**Author's Note:**

> hi there. got me some more kingsman feelings. enjoy this trash. the ending felt kinda forced to me, but it was 2am and i was tired so welp.

“You dirty fucking prick —“ Chester King wheezes as his internal organs shut down in rapid succession and his face contorts in pain. It’s over — _he’s_ over — in a pained gasp, a death rattle, and the _thunk_ of dead weight against the tabletop. And Eggsy feels the distinct swell of smug, anger driven pride in his chest at having been cursed with the mans last last breath. 

 

* * *

 

 

“Harry would’ve been proud of you,” Merlin tells him. Twice. Once from the plane while Eggsy mops sweat off his brow with the severed end of his tie, and again once they’ve formally inducted him into the realms of Kingsman.

 

The whole formality is brief. Merlin tells him it had previously included toasts and cordial small talk, but now that Merlin is actually Arthur, he shortens the whole ordeal to a brief handshake, seven documents he needs to sign, and the casual but heartfelt reminder of his fallen mentor. The bald man claps him on the shoulder, and Eggsy — who is replaying all things _Harry Hart_ themed in his head — feels five years old again. Except instead of a snowglobe, he’s clutching a manila envelope with the deed to his new house in it. And instead of having lost a father he no longer remembered, he’d lost…

 

Well, something’s _off_ in his chest. But he smiles through it and nods gratefully at Arthur, like he’s comforted by the sentiment instead of wounded. 

 

* * *

 

 

Six days later, they receive a call from a polite, shy American nurse asking — with a lot of _um_ ’s and _like_ ’s — if they were going to pick up their friend because he was conscious finally, and had been demanding a helicopter lift to London.

 

“No wonder his body was so difficult to find,” Arthur practically growls with wolfish delight. “Bastard’s too bloody tough to kill, even at point blank.”

 

And Eggsy stands a little straighter, curls back his shoulders and grins so fiercely that his jaw hurts. “Of course he is.”

 

* * *

 

 

Things are different, of course. You don’t survive a bullet to the head without a handful of complications. Not even Harry Hart escapes that particular brush with death unscathed.

 

Now, several months after they’d flown to Kentucky — _ugh, Kentucky_ — to retrieve their comrade, Harry has a metal plate the size of a small mobile phone wrapped around the hole they’d drilled into his skull to alleviate the pressure of his swelling brain. His hair hadn’t grown back evenly, but with the liberal application of styling gel and a little combing, it was barely noticeable anymore. Sometimes his hands shook uncontrollably now, too. But the bandages are long gone, and the HQ medical staff had even weened him off the pain killers (that he’d been too damn stubborn to take most of the time anyway). It was still recommended that he stay on the expansive mansion property, where he could be looked after if anything were to become fourthly complicated and were to require immediate medical attention — but considering Merlin (Arthur) had given Eggsy Harry’s house and Eggsy had already moved his mother and little sister in, it was just miles easier on all of them.

 

It also meant that Eggsy spent a good lot of time at HQ now adays, and when he wasn’t off cleaning up the messes that had sprung up in the wake of V-Day, he was Harry’s self appointed babysitter. Which had pissed Harry off for the first few weeks — “You’ve a unique, important set of skills. Now go _do_ something with them.” — but as Eggsy got less annoyingly concerned and treated him less like he was going to keel over at any moment, they got on better.

 

It’d been seven months, and while Harry had yet to be cleared for active field work, he was up and out and about on the grounds, even running and training in light hand-to-hand combat, and very obviously didn’t need a nanny. But still Eggsy came by on a pretty regular basis — if only to tell him about his most recent excursion into the underground organ exchange market, or how he’d dangled the kingpin of a human trafficking organization by the ankles from the CN Tower in Ontario. 

 

He goes into detail, gives Harry a play-by-play, and delights when the former Galahad smiles and indulges him; tells him he’s done well.

 

* * *

 

 

Eggsy became Galahad. Roxy became Lancelot. Merlin became Arthur. And Harry became Merlin.

 

None of them call each other by their _official_ names, not really. 

 

It’s only in the field, with a communication device in his ear and voices ringing in his head that he snaps — “yes, Merlin” or “no, Arthur” — to the correct man. Within the briefing room, it’s a free for all, a sort of organized chaos they’ve all learned to live with.

 

_If you’re prepared to adapt —_

 

* * *

 

 

Merlin doesn’t adapt well. Not really, never fully. When he’s not cleared for field duty and instead has to traipse around the control room and act as Arthur’s second set of eyes, he becomes restless. Every time he gives directions or advice through his headset, Eggsy thinks he sounds downright grumpy. But post mission, when Harry bullies him into medical for the slightest of scratches and the smallest of bruises and when Eggsy inquires casually: “You alright?”

 

The answer never changes.

 

“More than alright.”

 

And that damn irritatingly calm smile that looks like it holds _oceans_ and _waves_ just behind the line of his lips. 

 

* * *

 

 

Merlin begs Arthur first to let him back into the action, because _fuck the doctors, Nichol, I can’t sit idle_. And second, not to tell Galahad he’d practically gotten on his knees. 

 

_He’s a clever boy, Harry. He’ll figure it out._

 

_I know._

 

* * *

 

 

Their first mission together ends in spectacular failure. It’s something right out of a movie: they’re tied to chairs that are bolted to the floor in front of each other in a downright medieval torture chamber. There’s more, empty, to either side of them, but their captors had chosen to shackle the two of them to seats directly opposite each other so that Harry can watch as Eggsy’s gratuitously beaten, and then Eggsy can have a turn. It’s vicious, it’s brutal. 

 

Something about the near identical suits and glasses have their targets thinking they’re a father and son. Even without any blood relation between the two of them, something in Eggsy breaks when the man with knuckles flecked in his blood pulls a revolver out of the waist band of his pants and points it to Harry’s head.

 

“Tell us who sent you, or I will kill this man,” he says in a deep accent, eyes fixed and hand steady.

 

Not for the first time, Eggsy strains against the handcuffs, but gets nowhere near enough to hurt the man. “No, don’t, _please_ —”

 

“Tell us why you’re here.”

 

“Don’t fucking shoot him!”

 

“Who do you work for?”  


“I don’t know what you’re fucking on about!”

 

His breath catches in his throat when the tall ape of a Russian pistol whips Harry so hard that his head snaps forward. For a second, _for a second_ it looks like he’s not breathing, and something so visceral twists in Eggsy’s gut that he can’t even cry out in dismay. Then the other man spits blood into his own lap. He tilts his head ever so slightly up to look, to watch Eggsy through the fringe of messy hair. His gaze is cold, and he doesn’t so much as flinch when the safety clicks off right next to his ear.

 

“You will let me shoot him, boy?”

 

“I —” His voice wavers. Harry’s staring at him so intently, mouth pressed into a thin line of resilience; of resignation. Eggsy’s consternation is plain on his face — is this really going to be the second time he watches Harry Hart get shot in the head? no one survived that twice — but he gets the message. Nods slightly in the time it takes their executioner to interrupt again.

 

“Tell me who you work for, and I will not make you watch.”

 

Through split lips, and with blood bubbling between his teeth, Eggsy spits — “Fuck you!” — with as much vitriol and hate as he can muster; he rattles his chains again, with the inherent promise that he’s going to fuck this goon up if and when he got free. He’s barking more than he could possibly bite, but he thinks he sees Harry smile before the Russian grunts in resignation, and before the wall all out _explodes_. 

 

Lancelot fucks the mass of muscle and sadistic tendencies up instead; takes out his corner lurking buddies too, before helping the two of them out of their restraints. A few of Harry’s ribs are broken, and Eggsy wedges himself up under his mentors armpit to support his weight while Roxy radios Arthur to signal the extraction team. Neither of them say anything when Galahad sheds his gentlemanly decorum and kicks the bleeding body of their torturer in the stomach.

 

Harry stiffens minutely at his side.

 

Roxy just blinks before going on to apologize, _sorry, boys, but we’re ten stories up and Gawain’s just going to do a drive by, we’re going to have to jump._

 

* * *

 

 

In the helicopter, while Eggsy herds Harry into his seat and insists on buckling his seatbelt for him, the older man grabs his wrist and squeezes. 

 

“I’m proud of you.”

 

“For what? Almost letting you die?” He’s trying to joke, trying to secure the belt before the helicopter makes any sudden turns and they both go rolling out of the open sides. But Harry is deadpan serious when he responds.

 

“Yes.”

 

That strikes a chord in Eggsy he’s not ready to examine until they’re firmly on the ground.

 

* * *

 

 

That chord outright fucking _snaps_ the first time a _good boy_. It’s over something mundane and unimportant — over tea at the round table, just the two of them, and Eggsy’s going into detail about how he’d taken his sister to the London zoo for her fifth birthday, and then Harry’s just smiling, nodding, saying “good boy…” and something else that Eggsy doesn’t actually hear because there’s blood rushing so viciously in his head that all he can hear is his pulse.

 

Then all his blood redirects to a significantly lower part of his anatomy, and he has to quickly stand and excuse himself.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry’s sharp. He catches on quickly.

 

“Good boy,” he croons before — while Eggsy’s gagging on his cock. He’s got tears in his eyes and saliva all down his chin, and stares up at Harry with big, mournful eyes because he just _can’t_. Harry just pets his hair, offers quiet praise and quiet reassurance: _it’s alright, Eggsy, a sensitive gag reflex is perfectly normal, they would work on it._

 

“Good boy,” he praises again — when they’re done, boneless and sweaty in a decidedly very _un_ gentlemanly mess of sheets and semen. His hand finds his way to his protégés hair again, and Harry cards his fingers through the light locks until Eggsy’s panting subsides to gentle breathing, then deep breathing. 

 

And sometimes when the younger agent is asleep, he’ll kiss his fingers; lean over and kiss his forehead; just nestle his nose in his hair and tell him again — “good boy, I’m proud of you”. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please leave comments & kudos, they warm my heart.  
> party it up with me on [tumblr](http://floaturself.tumblr.com/)!


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